Barbara Adey: Cross-Functional Skills for Sales Success

Sales Lead Dog Podcast

Join us on this engaging episode of Sales Lead Dog as we explore the keys to empowering sales leaders for success with our special guest, Barbara Eadie, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for BTS. Listen in as Barbara shares her unique journey from an engineering background to a leadership role in sales, and how BTS uses immersive experiences and simulations to help clients align their teams around strategic goals. We emphasize the critical importance of execution and effective communication in understanding and addressing customer needs, demonstrating how a diverse skill set can pave the way for a successful career in sales.

Our conversation also uncovers the career paths and CRM challenges faced by professionals who navigate various roles within an organization. We discuss the benefits of gaining cross-functional knowledge versus staying in a specialized role and highlight the importance of building alliances within teams. Discover how technology plays a pivotal role in executing business strategies, especially in a consulting environment, and learn about the dynamics of client relationships, including the advantages of repeat business and inbound interest from long-standing clients.

In the final segment, we explore the role of CRM in sales success, focusing on accurate forecasting and the potential of AI to enhance data processing and drive revenue. Barbara and I discuss the importance of creating a positive culture around CRM usage and how effective communication can increase engagement among frontline employees. We also address common industry challenges, such as the need for accurate data to support marketing segmentation and targeted execution. Don't miss these valuable insights that bridge the gap between strategy and execution, underscoring the essential human element in sales technology.

Barbara Adey is Vice President of Sales and Marketing for BTS. She specializes in commercial transformation, bringing her experience in the end-to-end sales process from marketing to customer success. While at BTS, Barbara has led the assessment of sales strategy and operations of a $10B+ SaaS company, providing a plan for a two-year transformation. Her team was retained by a leading cloud service provider to transform go-to-market through dynamic business acumen and industry vertical fluency for their Enterprise account teams. She has also worked with two $1B+ software companies to embed new customer success frameworks across their sales process.

Prior to joining BTS, Barbara held executive roles in Silicon Valley at Cisco and at Hewlett Packard Enterprise in sales, strategy, and product management. She has successfully entered new markets and has three times scaled a product from zero to hundreds of millions in revenues. She also kept a multi-$B product line at #1 share for three years in an intensely competitive market. Barbara is a systems design engineer with digital transformation expertise in cloud, security, software, and SaaS. Over the course of her career, she has worked in every part of the value chain.

Quotes:

"At BTS, we immerse people in the change, literally authoring how it's going to happen and collaborating to understand how we're all going to be successful."

“In sales, you really need to have a thick skin. You're going to be not successful more than you're successful, and so you have to have that ability to just not let it get to you."

"I’ve been in sales, regulatory affairs, consulting, and product management. While it’s made me effective in my current role, I would advise people, if you're good at sales, keep doing it."

"We get a lot of inbound interest from clients we've worked with before. Sometimes they've moved to a new company and want to work with us again, which speaks volumes about the importance of building strong client relationships."

Links:

Barbara’s LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/barbaraadey/

BTS - https://bts.com

Get this episode and all other episodes of Sales Lead Dog at https://empellorcrm.com/salesleaddog